The sign up form is being a real pain but, once again, it is finally working consistently. Now if it'll just stay that way...
If you've signed up and don't get an e-mail from with with a week, please try it again. I respond to all sign ups, approvals and declines (rare).
Friday, November 2, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Authority by default
Here is a scam that's hard to describe and even harder to stop. I've spent the last several days reading and researching this to get an accurate name for it. I haven't found one that even applies to the situation. Its bit and pieces of several scams rolled into one.
This scam is a form of hijacking. The best way to explain it is to demonstrate it. Let's start with the below image:
This looks like the "Along for the Ride!" web site, doesn't it. Look a little closer... Look at the url. Pay close attention to the domain name. Who the blazes is northwestmarketingdirect.com and why is AFTR's content showing up under their domain and not my own?
Did they hack my secure sever? A close inspection showed the server was NOT hacked...
Are they coping my content to their server? After looking at the my server's logs, that's not the case.
Did they hijack my domain server? Yet again, no hacking detected and no signs of tampering. My domain servers are secured and locked...
So why is my content under their domain name? This is where things get real messy. Not only is northwestmarketingdirect.com displaying my content, but its indexed in the search engines with my content...
Hence, they are claiming my content as their own with what I call "Authority by default." Some SEO experts call this SEO hijacking, but the method used here doesn't fit that at all. The below image of a Google search illustrates this:
As you can see from the image, Google has their domain name with my content. It ain't over yet as this mess gets worse. After contacting my domain registrar, hosting service provider and the search engines, there is nothing I can do legally.
Read it again, there is nothing I can do legally. My copyrighted content is being stolen and I can do nothing about it. Before anything can be done legally, I have to prove malicious intent on the part of the owners of northwestmarketingdirect.com. One would think that it would be enough to see the a domain with content the originating owner did not authorize or give permission for would be enough.
It doesn't work that way because of the way this scam is perpetrated.
Now lets look into how this scam is actually done. Its actually very simple to do and requires no hardware or advanced knowledge. All you need to do is buy a domain name.
Yes, its actually that easy. Buy a domain name. Once you've bought your brand new domain name, you'll be able to use a domain manager for your registrar to configure your domain. Here is where the scam takes place.
All that needs to be done is point the newly created domain to an IP address. Lets demonstrate this by example of a very popular site, whitehouse.gov. I chose this example simply because only an idiot would actually try to scam the White House and if Google got a call from the Secret Service, they would not put out a letter telling the Secret Service they (Google) was going to do nothing, like they gave me.
The current IP address of the White House web site is 173.223.104.110, which rotates often. Now let's say someone creates a domain called obama-house.org and configures the DNS to point to 173.223.104.110. You now have both domain names pointing to the same IP address. This is perfectly legal and many companies do this with their domains, like sears.net and sears.org.
Because there is nothing illegal about this and permission is NOT required to do this, the scam now begins to take shape. Now all the owners of obama-house.org have to do is put a little money into search engine listings and back links. The result will be that the original domain will start to loose placement in the search engines, yet the scam domain will inherit all page rank and placements. Hence, the scam domain takes authority by default as the original domain can no longer be found in a search. At this point, the actual content owner now has to prove its their content.
Here's the kicker, because of having to prove malicious intent, all the scam domain owner has to say is something like this, "My apologies for the inconvenience, my DNS server was inappropriately configured. The problem has been resolved." That's it and the original domain owner is left with a mess to clean up while the scammer simply plug in another IP address to a popular site and repeat.
The original owner now has a damaged reputation, brand and unranked web site that can't be found in the search engine. This could also translate into lose of advertisers and profit.
I'm sure by now you're asking what payoff the scammer is going to get from this. If the scammer pulls this off, they'll get your page rank, search engine placement, and authority by default of your content. If your site had a front page listing, that could be big money once they scammer redirects the domain to their intended content.
It take years to build a good page rank and listing placement with quality back links. For this scam, years turn into only a few months...
Thankfully, there is something you can do to stop this. A couple of line in your Apache .htaccess breaks the whole scam and give you protection from this type of theft. I'm sure other servers have similar ways, but I only know Apache's as LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) servers are most common.
Two lines as your first rule in your .htacces are all you need to stop this:
The scam is now busted and your domain shows up as it should. The scammer is left with their domain name being ripped out of the search engines and your content, work, page rank, and site are still yours.
For me, northwestmarketingdirect.com will soon be a broken domain relegated to the garbage bin. Along for the Ride! and its contents are safe and it only took a few seconds to do.
This scam is a form of hijacking. The best way to explain it is to demonstrate it. Let's start with the below image:
This looks like the "Along for the Ride!" web site, doesn't it. Look a little closer... Look at the url. Pay close attention to the domain name. Who the blazes is northwestmarketingdirect.com and why is AFTR's content showing up under their domain and not my own?
Did they hack my secure sever? A close inspection showed the server was NOT hacked...
Are they coping my content to their server? After looking at the my server's logs, that's not the case.
Did they hijack my domain server? Yet again, no hacking detected and no signs of tampering. My domain servers are secured and locked...
So why is my content under their domain name? This is where things get real messy. Not only is northwestmarketingdirect.com displaying my content, but its indexed in the search engines with my content...
Hence, they are claiming my content as their own with what I call "Authority by default." Some SEO experts call this SEO hijacking, but the method used here doesn't fit that at all. The below image of a Google search illustrates this:
As you can see from the image, Google has their domain name with my content. It ain't over yet as this mess gets worse. After contacting my domain registrar, hosting service provider and the search engines, there is nothing I can do legally.
Read it again, there is nothing I can do legally. My copyrighted content is being stolen and I can do nothing about it. Before anything can be done legally, I have to prove malicious intent on the part of the owners of northwestmarketingdirect.com. One would think that it would be enough to see the a domain with content the originating owner did not authorize or give permission for would be enough.
It doesn't work that way because of the way this scam is perpetrated.
Now lets look into how this scam is actually done. Its actually very simple to do and requires no hardware or advanced knowledge. All you need to do is buy a domain name.
Yes, its actually that easy. Buy a domain name. Once you've bought your brand new domain name, you'll be able to use a domain manager for your registrar to configure your domain. Here is where the scam takes place.
All that needs to be done is point the newly created domain to an IP address. Lets demonstrate this by example of a very popular site, whitehouse.gov. I chose this example simply because only an idiot would actually try to scam the White House and if Google got a call from the Secret Service, they would not put out a letter telling the Secret Service they (Google) was going to do nothing, like they gave me.
The current IP address of the White House web site is 173.223.104.110, which rotates often. Now let's say someone creates a domain called obama-house.org and configures the DNS to point to 173.223.104.110. You now have both domain names pointing to the same IP address. This is perfectly legal and many companies do this with their domains, like sears.net and sears.org.
Because there is nothing illegal about this and permission is NOT required to do this, the scam now begins to take shape. Now all the owners of obama-house.org have to do is put a little money into search engine listings and back links. The result will be that the original domain will start to loose placement in the search engines, yet the scam domain will inherit all page rank and placements. Hence, the scam domain takes authority by default as the original domain can no longer be found in a search. At this point, the actual content owner now has to prove its their content.
Here's the kicker, because of having to prove malicious intent, all the scam domain owner has to say is something like this, "My apologies for the inconvenience, my DNS server was inappropriately configured. The problem has been resolved." That's it and the original domain owner is left with a mess to clean up while the scammer simply plug in another IP address to a popular site and repeat.
The original owner now has a damaged reputation, brand and unranked web site that can't be found in the search engine. This could also translate into lose of advertisers and profit.
I'm sure by now you're asking what payoff the scammer is going to get from this. If the scammer pulls this off, they'll get your page rank, search engine placement, and authority by default of your content. If your site had a front page listing, that could be big money once they scammer redirects the domain to their intended content.
It take years to build a good page rank and listing placement with quality back links. For this scam, years turn into only a few months...
Thankfully, there is something you can do to stop this. A couple of line in your Apache .htaccess breaks the whole scam and give you protection from this type of theft. I'm sure other servers have similar ways, but I only know Apache's as LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) servers are most common.
Two lines as your first rule in your .htacces are all you need to stop this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^DOMAIN.*
RewriteRule .* URL [R=301,L]These lines need to go under the "RewriteEngine on" line. Here is what mine looks like:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^tsswd\.net.*
RewriteRule .* http://tsswd.net [R=301,L]This works because in Apache, the %{HOST_NAME} variable is the domain name the visitor put in their browser or the one they clicked on. So what these lines are doing is checking if the URL coming into your site equals your domain name, if not then use a force (permanent) redirect that tells browser and (especially) search engines that non-matching domain is invalid.
The scam is now busted and your domain shows up as it should. The scammer is left with their domain name being ripped out of the search engines and your content, work, page rank, and site are still yours.
For me, northwestmarketingdirect.com will soon be a broken domain relegated to the garbage bin. Along for the Ride! and its contents are safe and it only took a few seconds to do.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Finally, a new server
Finally, AFTR is on a new high speed server.
What? You didn't see the switch over?
That was the idea. With all the headaches and interruptions in service the last server caused, I wanted this switch over to go smoothly. Thankfully, it did and the results are very nice.
Web page and widget load speed now take roughly half the time as previously. Lookups for the related blogs for the widget are also faster.
Also, this time the signup form actually works on the first try... I still can't believe I didn't catch that sooner....
Check it out and let me know what you think.
What? You didn't see the switch over?
That was the idea. With all the headaches and interruptions in service the last server caused, I wanted this switch over to go smoothly. Thankfully, it did and the results are very nice.
Web page and widget load speed now take roughly half the time as previously. Lookups for the related blogs for the widget are also faster.
Also, this time the signup form actually works on the first try... I still can't believe I didn't catch that sooner....
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Back to normal
I hate hitting pot holes in the road... This little excursion was a real whopper. AFTR is now running, once again, on my small server. The hopes of the new server have been throughly crushed, along with AFTR's traffic over the last couple of days.
I did get a few painful lesson out of this though:
1. Level I techs at a hosting company will say anything to get your money.
2. Level III techs at the same hosting company don't care what the billing, sales force and Level I techs tell you. If they don't like your site, too bad for you.
3. Don't count on the hosting company to honor any migration agreement. I was supposed to have the full 30 day migration period to work out the kinks without having to worry about having the account cancelled. Its clear that after 20 days, that didn't get honored...
4. I'm glad I was paranoid enough to keep backups on my small server.
5. This really hurt AFTR's advertising, search engine rankings, and the reputation I've spent 4 years building. A lot of work has been undermined with this "bump in the road."
Well, back to hunting for a larger server to run on... In the meantime, my small server will have to do and I'll have to think smarter in my code to make it work.
I did get a few painful lesson out of this though:
1. Level I techs at a hosting company will say anything to get your money.
2. Level III techs at the same hosting company don't care what the billing, sales force and Level I techs tell you. If they don't like your site, too bad for you.
3. Don't count on the hosting company to honor any migration agreement. I was supposed to have the full 30 day migration period to work out the kinks without having to worry about having the account cancelled. Its clear that after 20 days, that didn't get honored...
4. I'm glad I was paranoid enough to keep backups on my small server.
5. This really hurt AFTR's advertising, search engine rankings, and the reputation I've spent 4 years building. A lot of work has been undermined with this "bump in the road."
Well, back to hunting for a larger server to run on... In the meantime, my small server will have to do and I'll have to think smarter in my code to make it work.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Bumps in the bandwidth
It seems that keeping my new host happy is going to be as much of a challenge as writing AFTR was and is. I can't blame them really... they have a lot of customers to answer to, but its killing the site, its advertising and making things damned hard in keeping current members and attracting new members.
Hopefully all this will be sorted out soon and things will be somewhat back to normal. In the mean time, please accept my apologies for the unwanted downtime. All advertisers will have their time extended double the amount of downtime.
Hopefully all this will be sorted out soon and things will be somewhat back to normal. In the mean time, please accept my apologies for the unwanted downtime. All advertisers will have their time extended double the amount of downtime.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
SignUp form messed up
Somehow the form for the sign ups didn't convert over to the new system properly. That was a bit of a nasty surrprise...
I'm atill not sure why it was such a mess... but I suppose I should count myself lucky considering the AFTR server has over thirty four thousand (34,000) files that did convert flawlessly.
The form is back up and running perfectly now...
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Meta Tags progress
Well, I've made progress on getting the meta tags into the blog header without wrecking it. It seems Blogger does support the description, but not the author and keywords meta tags. I suppose thats better then nothing...
The Description meta tag can be found under:
Settings -> Search Preferences
Now look at the top of the main part for Meta Tags -> Description
While this doesn't provide a full SEO suite, it does at least provide the most important elements needed for a proper search engine listing...
The Description meta tag can be found under:
Settings -> Search Preferences
Now look at the top of the main part for Meta Tags -> Description
While this doesn't provide a full SEO suite, it does at least provide the most important elements needed for a proper search engine listing...
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Got the blog going
Well, I have this thing up and running fairly well... Adding the AFTR widget was easier then I expected. I used the Add "HTML/Javascript" gadget with the code from the Widgets page for the 800 wide version. Its seems to fit well with the layout I've chosen.
Migrating from my custom software to Blogger wasn't as difficult as I expected, save one area - the meta tags. I have yet to get the meta tags for Title, Description, Author, and Keywords working without editing the template by hand and completely screwing it up. This one has been absolutely frustrating to no end. I've been building web sites for over ten years and given my level of frustration, I can only imagine what a true novice blogger feels. It really does open the door wide for WordPress, TypePad or some other platform.
I've read several ways to add the meta tags by hand, but I really don't want to go that way as it can be a real pain and seriouly limits the use of templates. Going the manual way means adding the meta tags back in every time changes are made to the layout. Thats just not a good way to go, especially for beginners. One would have thought that Google would have used the proper metrics since they are a search engine. In all honesty, it seems Google is self defeating its own system.
In the interim, I've programmed the AFTR spider to pull the meta data from a blog's RSS. While its not the best way to go, its significantly better then trying to figure out Blogger's crazy mechanics. I personally am not interested in becoming an expert in "Blogger Babble" and its probably safe to assume neither are most of Blogger's users....
Migrating from my custom software to Blogger wasn't as difficult as I expected, save one area - the meta tags. I have yet to get the meta tags for Title, Description, Author, and Keywords working without editing the template by hand and completely screwing it up. This one has been absolutely frustrating to no end. I've been building web sites for over ten years and given my level of frustration, I can only imagine what a true novice blogger feels. It really does open the door wide for WordPress, TypePad or some other platform.
I've read several ways to add the meta tags by hand, but I really don't want to go that way as it can be a real pain and seriouly limits the use of templates. Going the manual way means adding the meta tags back in every time changes are made to the layout. Thats just not a good way to go, especially for beginners. One would have thought that Google would have used the proper metrics since they are a search engine. In all honesty, it seems Google is self defeating its own system.
In the interim, I've programmed the AFTR spider to pull the meta data from a blog's RSS. While its not the best way to go, its significantly better then trying to figure out Blogger's crazy mechanics. I personally am not interested in becoming an expert in "Blogger Babble" and its probably safe to assume neither are most of Blogger's users....
Monday, September 17, 2012
A new beginning
I know that is a strange title for my dedicated readers, but one that really is accurate for this situation. The best way to explain this is that "Along for a Ride!" (AFTR) is now on a brand new super high powered server. Its hard to believe that AFTR has actually grown that much.
How it has grown and changed over the last four years is amazing. What started out as an experiment in in developing a different type of traffic system has grown into a full traffic system and a complete web directory with a new and innovative approach to getting traffic to blogs.
With the new and more powerful server being a "new" beginning for AFTR, I decided the AFTR blog needed a new beginning as well. As many of you know, I wrote my own blogging software. While it has working incredibly well. there is one major disadvantage - it leaves me unable to help people with "simple" questions on Blogger, Wordpress, and other common blogging platforms.
Blogger seems to be one of the more popular free blogging platforms that easy to learn and use, so I start here. I figure the best way to help AFTR members and prospective new members is to experience all the issues as a "new" blogger myself by learning as I go.
So, here I am... Learning how to use Blogger from scratch. So far, its been interesting and easy enough... with the very simple changes I've made. We'll see how well I do when I try to add the AFTR widget and my other widgets and advertising to this blog.
Without any further adieu, welcome to the new AFTR blog.... GOD help me with this crazy thing....
How it has grown and changed over the last four years is amazing. What started out as an experiment in in developing a different type of traffic system has grown into a full traffic system and a complete web directory with a new and innovative approach to getting traffic to blogs.
With the new and more powerful server being a "new" beginning for AFTR, I decided the AFTR blog needed a new beginning as well. As many of you know, I wrote my own blogging software. While it has working incredibly well. there is one major disadvantage - it leaves me unable to help people with "simple" questions on Blogger, Wordpress, and other common blogging platforms.
Blogger seems to be one of the more popular free blogging platforms that easy to learn and use, so I start here. I figure the best way to help AFTR members and prospective new members is to experience all the issues as a "new" blogger myself by learning as I go.
So, here I am... Learning how to use Blogger from scratch. So far, its been interesting and easy enough... with the very simple changes I've made. We'll see how well I do when I try to add the AFTR widget and my other widgets and advertising to this blog.
Without any further adieu, welcome to the new AFTR blog.... GOD help me with this crazy thing....
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